The present invention relates to a charge managing system, a charger, and a program.
There have been considered charge systems that realize a business model of providing a charge service to owners of electric vehicles and acquiring counter values for the service from the owners of the electric vehicles, based on installation of a charger that can charge batteries mounted on electric vehicles. Time required for charging a storage battery in an electric vehicle varies depending on specifications of an electric vehicle and specifications of a charger. According to a method generally referred to as rapid charge, several tens of minutes are necessary, and according to a method referred to as ordinary charge, several hours are necessary. Thus, a longer time is necessary than a time (about a few minutes) required for filling gasoline to a gasoline vehicle. Therefore, it is considered difficult for the owner of an electric vehicle to take such an easy behavior as entering a service station without reservation and fill gasoline by waiting until a previous visitor finishes filling the visitor's vehicle, just like filling gasoline to a gasoline vehicle.
As one of systems for supporting users who receive a charge service to the electric vehicles, a full-occupancy information providing system that provides the users with information about whether the charger is being used can be considered. This system is for supporting the users to take behavior of confirming an availability situation of a charger based on a car navigation terminal, a portable telephone, or a display panel of a charger-installation place, searching an available charger, and charging. Such a system provides the users with a using-situation of a charger such as an operating time, number of chargers, maximum power (50 kW, 15 A/200 V, etc.) that a charger can provide. The number of chargers and maximum power and the like are in most cases the information registered in advance in a database as static information. Further, such a system also provides users who started charge with information about a scheduled charge-end time, a charge amount, and charge completion, and supports the users in taking behavior of coming back to their vehicles.
On the other hand, there have been considered charge systems that are built in with a storage battery to reduce operation cost of a charge system and to use reproducible energy for charge. For example, in Patent Document 1, there is disclosed a charge station that includes a plurality of chargers, a plurality of batteries, a power generator using a new energy such as photovoltaic power generation, and a power receiving unit for receiving a commercial power supply. The charge station described in Patent Document 1 accumulates night power that is at lower cost than that of daytime power and reproducible energy into a storage battery, and charges an electric vehicle by using the accumulated power and power from the commercial power supply.
Patent Document 1: Patent Publication JP-A-2010-252587
However, in the case of the charge system built in with a storage battery as described in Patent Document 1, a power situation to be used for charging the electric vehicle changes depending on an amount of power accumulated in the storage battery. For example, when an amount of power accumulated in the storage battery is zero, even when a capacity of an installed rapid charger is maximum 50 kW, when power that can be acquired from a commercial power supply is 20 kW, a charge service of only 20 kW can be provided. Further, for example, when an amount of power accumulated in second and subsequent batteries is 2 kWh, even when three rapid chargers are installed, there is a possibility that a power amount is in shortage to charge an electric vehicle, and there is a case that the service can be provided by only one rapid charger.
Further, in the course of performing charge to a plurality of electric vehicles, when charge to one vehicle has finished, the power so far being used becomes a surplus and can be used to charge other vehicles. In this case, regarding the charge to the other vehicles, the charge will finish earlier than a scheduled charge-end time that is assumed at a charge start time. That is, providing only static information has a problem in that the users cannot recognize a charge capacity and a scheduled charge-end time that change depending on a change in an amount of power accumulated in batteries and a change in a power situation due to a change in a situation of power charge to the other electric vehicles.